Laurillard's Conversational Framework has rightly had a strong impact on our understanding of how teaching and learning 'works'. But, increasingly, research about learning is exploring the spaces in-between this framework. Researchers are beginning to examine the emotional/non-verbal aspects of learning as a conversational process; what we each bring to it in terms of hopes, desires, beliefs and confidence, and how this may affect students differently, depending on their backgrounds and attitudes. What if knowledge is also contested, as well as understood/mastered by the student through guidance from the tutor? Or contested between tutors?
Ideas about threshold concepts (or sticking places) also potentially challenge the smoothness of the Laurillard conversational flow; what if we actually learn in jumps and starts, if there is something we just dont 'get' however well it is explained? Does this change the shape of the framework or merely alters how it operates as a process of conversations through time? And of course - what is the impact of the conceptual, physical and virtual spaces on the conversation? The Conversational Framework is a key starting point, but it raises as many questions as it answers.
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